ite images that so often
shed ineffable grace and tenderness over his poems. It may, then, be
said that, by maintaining alive in his mind scenes passed at Annesley,
which recall the chaste, unhappy loves of Romeo and Juliet, and Lucy, he
thereby satisfied an intellectual want of the poet that was quite
independent of his heart as a man.

But, nevertheless, all those who can feel the heart's beatings through
the veil of poetic language will understand that Lord Byron's verses on
Mary Chaworth owe their origin to real grief.

Could it be otherwise? The experience resulting from reflection and
comparison, which made him afterward say, that the perfections of the
girl were the creation of his imagination at fifteen, because he found
her in reality quite other than angelic;[90] that she was fickle, and
had deceived him. This experience, I say, was wanting to the child.
Thus, then, Miss Chaworth was for him at that period the beau ideal of
all his young fancy could paint as best and most charming.

At the same time, this love, notwithstanding the difference of age, was
not, on his side, the giddy result of too much ardor. It was composed of
a thousand circumstances and feelings,--of practical, wise, and generous
thoughts. A far-off prospect of happiness heightened all the noble
instincts of the boy, and all the ideas of order that belonged to his
fine moral nature.

To reunite two noble families,--to efface the stain of blood and hatred
through love,--to revive again the ancient splendor of his ancestral
halls,--all these thoughts mingled with the idea of his union with Miss
Chaworth, and made his heart beat with hope. If there were excess in
such hope,--if there were illusion,--the fault lies with the relatives
of the young lady and herself, rather than with him. Generosity was on
his side alone, because he alone had a right to feel rancor.

"She jilted me," says he in prose, and in verse we read,--

"She knew she was by him beloved,--she knew,
For quickly comes such knowledge, that his heart
Was darken'd with her shadow, and she saw
That he was wretched."

If, then, it was natural for a girl to prefer a young man of more
suitable age, handsome and fashionable, to a boy whose features were yet
undeveloped, and whom she treated as a child and a brother; was it quite
as natural to flatter him,--load him with caresses,--with those gifts
likely to foster illusion and hope,--pledges considered as love tokens?
Was